Pink Poogle Toy Forum

A few weeks ago someone had a rant that mentioned inflation. I'm not going back to the topic of the rant, but I was just wondering what are the actual things that affect this economy? Inflation (or deflation) only happens when the amount of NP is increasing or decreasing... so here's my list so far:

Money In:
Games (including gambling games with starting jackpots [like the lottery, slots], and competitions [mystery pic, contests with NP prizes, etc])
Freebies/Chance games with NP prizes (Tombola, Wheels, Scratchcards)
Stock Market (if selling higher than bought)
Quests
Random Events
Sponsor Clicks
New account starting NP
Glitch Compensation (TNT giving money for an item error)
Premium Bonuses
Referral Rewards


Money out:
Buying items from a real Neopian shop (most influenced by the most expensive shop out there - the hidden tower)
Random Events (where NP is taken)
Paid chance games (wheels, buried tresure) where NP paid is more than NP won
Gambling games (if amount paid by users > than jackpot/paid amount)
Stock Market (if bankruptcy... or selling lower than bought)
Kelp/Feeding your Neopets (like at McDonalds)
Rides (Tiki Tours/Merry-Go-Round)
Donations (Tombola, Wishing Well, Money Tree)
Adopting/Abandoning Pets
Upgrading (Shop, Gallery, Neohome)
Neolodge
Glitches that TNT does not compensate for
Inactive Accounts
and of course... maybe one of the greatest sources of NP out: Freezings


If there are any other sources of the two, please write them here!

make sure only to include instances where, for NP in, the money doesn't come from other users, only from neopets, and for NP out, the money doesn't go to other users, it just disappears into cyberspace.


EDIT: added the last 4 replies =) advent calendar is included in freebies. i left freezing last for dramatic effect and darn it, i thought of upgrading a while ago but didn't write it on the list. thanks for reminding me!

EDIT 2: Added Premium/Referral Bonuses, Neolodge, and "inactive accounts" - though inactive accounts may at anytime become active again and placed back into the economy. anything mentioned that i didn't include belongs somewhere already said - lever of doom i consider a chance game (but... don't know if you can ever win anything), MP, LC, PPL, etc, are in the "competitions" category... and the rest are items related, and have no effect on the amount of neopoints (specifically) in rotation, just item movement or usage. if you want me to explain, just ask again. endeavourl's talking about "total wealth" is definitely interesting. when i'm feeling up to the challenge, i will start that analysis.

I never thought of money out factor before....No wonder parts of the economy are starting to look like post WW1 germany.


Anyways....
Advent calender.
I doubt this counts but glitch compensation.

I say that because when I submitted a bug report sometimes last year for the rollback, I couldn't recall the items I had only their est worth and they just gave that to me in NP (which, was rather nice of them auctually....).

A few that I think are 'money out' (if I'm interpreting correct):
Rides (Tiki Tour and Merry-go-round)
Donations (Money Tree, Wishing Well)
Kelp (this may be a donation-ish item)

I'm curious to see where this may lead...

Money Out:

Adopting Pets
Abanonding Pets

Sometimes that can add up when you adopt pets to zap for guild adoptions/because they have a bad name/etc.

Ooo.....

Money out:
Upgrading shops/gallery
neohome construction (?)

NP in:
Premium's monthly bonus
Bank intrest?

We might be able to help more if we had a better idea what we are working for...

NP Out:
NeoLodge.
Scratchcard Kiosks

One I think deserves honorable mention as well: The Hidden Tower

Edit: My previous argument was not stated very clearly, so heres a fixed up version -

Using the defenition of money in the economics sense (that money is anything tradable that retains its value and is able to be exchanged for other goods), some of the money out things arent necessarily a drain on the wealth of the economy. The neopian economy isnt actually just counted by neopoints, its also counted through pets, petpets, items, all things that you can trade around between players, albeit pets and accounts more or less illegaly.

Buying items from a real Neopian shop, for example, actually causes a lot of the inflation. Restocking is currently a way of making a lot of money, as many rare items do restock, are bought for 1-100k, and are sold for millions.

In general, I think that you should resort the money in money out as wealth in and wealth out of the neopets economy, and events such as random events, wheels, and stockmarkets should not be put in both columns, but should be put as their general input in the economy (for example stocks would generally be a positive to the wealth of neopets, and would be put in the wealth in column, as more people buy low sell high as opposed to vice versa, and there are only rare instances of banktrupcies in the neopian stock market.) Some things then might be put into a neutral column, stuff like buried treasure that I think is uncertain in the amount of actual wealth that they insert (or take out) of the neopean economy, or that the jackpots they give out is exactly what is paid in through the game fee.

While sorting the forces of the economy through wealth, some of the major wealth out catagories would include:
Reading books
Eating Food
Fragile battledome items breaking/one use items
Attaching petpetpets
Painting pets/petpets
Discarding items
And any other action that renders an item unusable or makes it dissapear from the neopian world

Sorry for this long post

And if you're going to keep the money system, you can add in the lever of doom to money out, and contests such as mystery pic, lenny conundrum, and PPL selections to money in.

Completely disagree with you here, mate. There is hardly an equivalent of money entering the economy. WW1 Germany had the exchange decreased by about 250 million times. Neopets has had a lot of inflation in the last 5 years, but you can hardly say that it was equivalent to that.

But that's totally irrelevant, so I'll just add a couple of factors.

Money In:

Money Out:
Hidden Tower
Using One-Use Items
Cooking Pot

Wealth/Money In:
-Referral prizes
-Healing Springs
-Smuggler's Cove (items are almost always worth more than paid)

Wealth/Money Out:
-Accounts becoming inactive (This probably has more of an effect than frozen accounts.)
-Quests where the reward is worth less than the item given

This is a big one, so don't forget glitches. I'm aware of people who have lost millions from glitches, both in expensive items and in neopoints. As far as I know, TNT didn't compensate for most of those glitches.

I don't think the smuggler's cove applies here, because a user pays in dubloons, not in NP.

True, but if we're talking about wealth rather than just NP, then it definitely applies.

i will update my list tomorrow, (happy new years from hk, btw but i wanted to comment on the "items" factor of the whole wealth in/wealth out thing.

i took this into account, and i boiled it down to the fact that i was talking about the economy as a whole, not the individual wealth of each player. i know that there are one use items, consumable items, and the fact that restockers gain incredible amounts of wealth from restocking. but here was my thought process:

say i need to spend 5 dubloons on a training course. in order to do this, i would either need to find the dubloons through a random event/coltzan's shrine, OR buy it from another neopian (trade/shop). if i find the 5 dubloon coin on the site and use it, no money has been spent, so there is no money in or money out. if i buy it from a shop, i have just transferred all those neopoints from myself to another player (who also had to have found those dubloons somewhere)... and so no money has moved in or out of the economy. yes, the "value" of my pet has risen... but that should not affect things such as inflation.

consumables are a similar situation... the snowballs i use in the BD are found or bought from another player, so no money is created or destroyed

and, of course, restocking. when someone restocks in a neopian shop, they are sending money out of the economy (say an orange chocolate for 200 NP). when they sell this item to another player, the player is transferring the true value of the item (say 10,000 NP) to the restocker. thus, no money has moved into or out of the economy, except the original 200 NP. the restocker is richer, but the economy shouldn't change.

that is why i focused on neopoints "created" or "destroyed" - received out of thin air (from TNT i guess) or disappearing into thin air.

you have interesting factors about the value of items and the idea of "total wealth" (including neopet value), as well as individual wealth... but please correct me if i'm wrong in saying that these factors shouldn't affect inflation. there may be an error in my thought process, so tell me. anyway, those types of things are probably intended for another type of analysis... but i'm gonna sleep on it and think about it first =)

Sorry bumpty85, but I still have to know. What are you working towards? You are pretty clear what you want cataloged, but not what the final product will be. Sorry to sound rude, but I'm looking for a scientific method answer, namely just a hypothesis. I'm willing to help with data collection blindly, but sorry, I'm human...ish and have natural human...ish curiosity.